HORNNIES

Welcome Cardano NFT Family, we hope you have all had an amazing start to 2022 (try to ignore the crypto price charts!). Please do accept our sincerest apologies for the delay for January's blog post. It’s been a crazy start to the year...

NMKR Studio has got off to a tremendous start! The team here led by Patrick Tobler have been working overtime to deliver an unprecedented level of launches, partnerships and industry events. You can read all about it later in this post.

In addition, we have already broken our own record for NFTs minted in a single month, and you can see these impressive figures in the “Review in Numbers” feature below, after the interview.

Speaking of the interview, we are delighted to start the year off with a truly ambitious and impressive project by the name of Hornnies. We are sure that those of you invested in the CNFT scene will have heard of them. Either way, here is the wonderful discourse we had with Jo who explains what they are about, what has been achieved and what you can expect in the near future. There is much to be excited about! Let’s get it…

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Maker Review (MR) Intro: Hello Jo, and Happy New Year. We have been very much looking forward to featuring you since your initial launch, and with everything that will be happening, I think it’s a good idea to take it back to the beginning. I think our readers would love to get a thorough understanding of who you are, what Hornnies is all about and where it’s going!

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MR Q1: Let’s start off the big question; Can you tell us why you chose Cardano? What is it about this blockchain that convinced you it was the place to launch your NFT project?

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Jo: This is an easy one for me. I love Cardano; I really do. I was introduced to Cardano about 2 years ago. Back when I had just gotten my very first internship money, I wanted to invest it into something crypto related. That was when I stumbled across a youtube video from CryptoCrow, where he made an incredibly awesome and passionate speech about Cardano and how it will change the world; so I dived into it. Like many others, I came in for the gains and maybe a bit of FOMO, but I stayed for the revolution and the belief that Cardano will be the foundation for many, many things we see in the future. I want to be a part of that, not just as an investor, but as a creator.

I love everything about Cardano. I love the way it's built: through the research based method and peer review process. I forgot where I got this phrase form, but “Cardano is built in a way you want the plane you’re gonna be flying in to be built”, yes its progression might be slower but it is methodical and it is done with the mind of the people that will be in it.

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‍MR Q2: How big is your team and what are the key roles? Do you have in-house artists/designers?

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Jo: My team is really just me and my three other best friends. We are all computer engineering students in our very last semester of university! We do all the coding and development together, all the NFT image generation together, twitter, discord and other social media together, with each person taking main ownership of one or two areas.

Design wise, we created Hornnies by ourselves; we hand drew the pixel images using an app called Pixaki on our iPads and wrote a python image generation code to make the collection the way we wanted it! As all of the members are more of a technical background than an artistic one, we do hire an external pixel artist for help in terms of designing some of the more intricate traits!

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MR Q3: When and where did you hear about NMKR Studio for the first time, and what were the reasons that attracted you to the platform?

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Jo: We heard about NMKR Studio when we were doing our initial pre-launch research. We knew NFT Minting would be a barrier for us as students because we didn’t really have any initial funding. So as I stumbled across NMKR Studio on the internet, I decided to write an email to them, detailing our project and our vision. Surprisingly, Kristian from NMKR responded! These guys, Patrick, Kristian, Tobias, and many others behind the scenes meant the world to us. They were willing to help kick start our project when it was really just an idea/vision. So Hornnies being where it is at today has everything to do with NMKR Studio <3

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MR: That is so wonderful to hear from you! I know our team will be immensely proud to know this. Thank you!

MR Q4: So, you’ve chosen NMKR Studio, fantastic! Please explain what your NFT project is all about! What are the utility, rarities and the USPs? We know our readers would love to know from the people who created it!

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Jo: Hornnies is a development and utility-focused project. Our goal is to build a virtual fantasy sports-like platform where users can train and use their NFTs to compete in various types of contests through on-chain and smart contract mechanisms!

The utility for Hornnies would be the ability to use it to compete in simulated sports competition and win rewards such as ADA or other NFTs! Rarity or traits will be related to how the Hornnie’s stats will look like in the final fully fledged SuperBull App!

What makes Hornnies or the SuperBull App unique is our aim to make it into an on-chain, smart contract operated platform.

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MR Q5: Tell us about your experiences in using NMKR Studio. What was the platform like to work with in practice? Did you have any challenges when building the framework?

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Jo: We are a partner with NMKR Studio! We knew at the start that if we want to provide the best minting experience, which is ultra important to the success of a project, we better find a professional to do it for us! Thus, as aforementioned, with them liking our project and ideas, we formed a partnership and have been able to leave all the technicalities around minting, payments, and NFT metadata to them!

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MR: Ok, so you left all the technical back-end stuff to the pros at NMKR Studio! So my next question was going to be…Q6: Which front-end functions and back-end infrastructure for dealing with customer payments did you implement and why? Did you partake in this decision making?

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Jo: Now you can add something that flows naturally here ;-) Front End payment for our mint is also handled by NFT Maker Pro! One thing we knew that can make or especially break a project is the minting/buying experience. This was why we were incredibly happy and at ease when NFT Maker Pro showed us their payment gateway, that is able to not only provide a nice minting experience with the payment options and NFT reveal mechanism, but also able to combat the recent congestion issue and botting issues!

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MR Q7: Can you articulate how you formulated the user interface and experience of your website and why you decided on this final design and functionality?

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Jo: For Hornnies.io, which is our main introductory site to this project, we wanted to provide a simplistic and minimalistic style. NFT and blockchain are already complicated on their own, so we want those that are looking at our project to feel a sense of comfort and not get overwhelmed.

For Superbull.io, which is a proof of concept web app we wrote, we want to let those who are already into NFTs and blockchain to feel what it is like to really use their NFT to do something! Because to us that is what “Utility” is all about!

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MR Q8: How do you feel about your launch? Is there anything you would do differently next time?

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Jo: This is our second launch! Series 0 happened back in October and this current one is series 1! This is also the first launch during the Cardano congestion era. Compared to our last one, we are indeed more prepared and knowledgeable in terms of how to deal with different situations!

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MR Q9: What’s next for your project? How do you envision the evolution of your NFTs?

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Jo: With series1 almost over it’s finally time to get to our most exciting part of this project! As mentioned, we are all computer engineering students, so our passion is really in the game development side of things. So! We are now ready to get started on building the fully fledged SuperBull App!! We have partnered with an amazing blockchain gaming company to do this and we can’t wait to get started!

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MR: This is super exciting and we can’t wait to see it SuperBull in action! I know our audience will be intrigued as much as we are.

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MR Q10: Any final words of advice for the readers who may be planning their own NFT launch?

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Jo: Yes! The biggest suggestion that I would say, and I got this from Kristian who I really see as a big mentor during this CNFT journey, is to not rush things. We all know crypto time is crazy fast, and it can sometimes make creators feel the urgent need to push his/her project out asap. I was the same. But I would say don’t worry too much about the timing or losing opportunities, but try to make your project in the best form that it can be first and the result will come.

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MR: Wise words indeed from our COO Kristian. There is just one reason why he’s a BOSS in this game! Wow, so that was amazing Jo, thank you so much for your time and for illuminating us all to this amazing creation of yours. We can see the potential, and I’m certain so can the Cardano and wider NFT community. We wish you all the best, and please come back later when SuperBull is in action! To keep up with the latest, we urge everyone to visit their Discord!

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